http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123509358392428915.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

You might want to revise your post to include key excerpts and your comments.

When I read that Ted was being tried in Washington, that was a red flag that he was being singled out in the political version of DWR (driving while Republican).

I don’t see how to edit (or delete) an already posted diary. Any of the moderators, please feel free to do either.

In terms of the trial In the beginning I actually figured they must have had something real on him. The other Repubs taken down up here were small fry, and there was a real feeding frenzy here based on oil related stuff, and to be honest, some of it was deserved. We had guys selling their ass for less than a hooker in Tijuana charges at 5am.

As for Stevens, I’m not sure I can overstate his popularity up here. Given that, and the fact that there was a Repub Administration in the WH, and at least theoretically in charge of DOJ, I assumed they had the goods. As the trial went on, and it became clear, the two things he was guilty of were, 1) trusting an ahole (Bill Allen) 2) getting too comfy with the whole loosey goosey gift giving thing, I just kept wondering, who wanted him gone? This was go and sin no more and pay a 5k fine stuff. I’d still kill for an answer to the “who and why” question. I bet we’d learn a lot more about a lot of things if we did.

And I must say, it p**sed me off that we basically got taken by a bunch of liberal Democratic operatives masquerading as guardians of the public trust in the Justice Department.

I believe the Directors endorsed Mark Begich once Stevens’ “conviction” was announced. But it now turns out that with all that smoke there was actually no fire, just partisan hacks leaking damaging misinformation to ideological compadres in the Press only to charge the Senator with perjury.

As a sidenote; right now, I believe that there is no chance for any Republican who is charged with anything, especially something as nebulous as perjury, where a failure to remember every last syllable in a conversation had a year ago can easily be spun, to be acquitted in a DC courtroom.

DC is too partisan and too Democratic to give Republicans a decent shake.

Worse was that the prosecution compromised itself multiple times during Stevens trial.

Chad Joy claimed prosecutors covered up evidence and tried to keep a witness from testifying … During the trial, Judge Sullivan had also admonished the prosecution for failing to share documents with the defense and redacting exculpatory passages from witness transcripts.

AChance complained bitterly here about this – that we were committing fratricide by joining the Left in denouncing Stevens. That there was no evidence that VECO ever received anything from Stevens and that a DC jury was surely going to convict any Republican put before it.

And he was right.

Loyalty is a two-way street. In hindsight, even given that he was earmarker-extraordinaire, the GOP didn’t cover itself in glory when it came to Ted Stevens. He deserved better.

We lost several sorely needed Senate seats that could have been saved, which in turn could have held back the dike breach.

A lot of people are going to drown and land lost to the sea. We haven’t seen anything yet.